Joel Brinkley: Do we want this foolish man?

September 12, 2012|American Voices | Tribune Media Services

Mitt Romney should be ashamed. They way he behaved on Tuesday night and Wednesday after the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and the killing of J. Christopher Stevens, the American ambassador to Libya, is not befitting a candidate for president of the United States.

Republican officeholders who are just as partisan as he is knew the right things to say. House Speaker John Boehner said, "We mourn for the families of our countrymen in Benghazi, and condemn this horrific attack."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, as self-interested a Republican politician as exists in the United States, made a similar remark: "I join my colleagues in strongly condemning the murder of these innocent Americans. And I support employing every available tool at our disposal to ensure the safety of Americans overseas and to hunt down those responsible for these attacks." No partisan attacks.

As for Romney, he went off half-cocked and called the administration's behavior "disgraceful." And since then, he has refused to back down.

"The president takes responsibility not just for the words that come from his mouth, but also for the words that come from his ambassadors, from his administration, from his embassies, from his State Department," Romney declared. "The statement that came from the administration was a statement which is akin to apology."

A moment like this, immediately after the death of a respected U.S. ambassador, is a time for Americans to pull together, in mourning and resolve -- not to use this tragedy for partisan advantage. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, remarked: "This is one of those moments when Americans must unite as Americans. It is exactly the wrong time to throw political punches."

Even Rep. Paul Ryan, Romney's vice presidential candidate, was chaste, saying: "This is a time for healing. It is a time for resolve. In the face of such a tragedy, we are reminded that the world needs American leadership, and the best guarantee of peace is American strength."

To that end, President Obama immediately dispatched dozens of Marines to Libya and other volatile spots. As for Romney, however, he showed once again that he holds absolutely no understanding of what American diplomats face.

Hordes of Egyptians were pouring over the embassy wall in Cairo, angry about a silly YouTube video that made fun of the young Prophet Mohammed. I watched the video, apparently made by an American, and it was amateur and boorish. All the U.S. Embassy in Egypt did was disavow it -- properly so!

What would Romney have embassy officials do: Call the protestors in, with their firebombs and clubs, and invite them to watch the video -- as an example of free speech? No, instead, Wednesday morning, after he learned that Ambassador Stevens and three of his aides had been killed, he made matters worse.

"When our grounds are being attacked and breached," the "first response of the United States must be outrage at the breach of the sovereignty of our nation," he asserted. "And apology for America's values is never the right course."

He went on to accuse the Obama administration of showing "sympathy with those who waged the attacks." Wisely, the Obama adminiastration declined to respond. Stevens was the first U.S. ambassador killed while on duty since 1979, when Ambassador Adolph Dubs was kidnapped and killed in Afghanistan.

Certainly, the Arab reaction to the video was not right, fair or just. It also showed rank hypocrisy. Almost every day, the Arab press is filled with lurid anti-Semitic cartoons -- like one in Qatar a few days ago showing an evil-looking, hook-nosed Israeli about to eat an Arab politician who was criticizing Israel's West Bank settlement policies.

But after the Muhammad cartoon incident in Denmark seven years ago, and several similar crises since, U.S. and other diplomats are fully aware of the dangerous consequences from moments like this.

All of this is typical for Romney. He has proved over and over again he knows nothing whatsoever about diplomacy and foreign affairs.

At least we know Obama's foreign policies, like them or not. But Romney is hypocritical, deliberately vague -- or heedlessly self-interested. And every time he steps into this arena, he blunders. During his recent foreign trip, he insulted the British and then the Palestinians. Then in Poland, he enthusiastically extolled the European system -- even though earlier he had bitterly accused Obama of trying "to turn America into a European-style entitlement society."

Is this foolish man the one we want at our foreign policy helm?

(Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former foreign correspondent for the New York Times.)